It always seems to me that when I am reading creative essays, or any creative piece, that there is a sentence or a part that is not necessarily the most eloquent, that really captivates me. In reading, "The Gift of Years", I was particularly struck by one simple line on page 52. It is in reference to Ong Binh, the father of the girl that Mai kicked, and this is the moment when Lam went over to teach this man a lesson. When the father came out, the narrator said, "He stood hunched as though there were weights on his back". Normally, this bland cliche would irritate me(and I read about someone else not being irritated by something in this story that would normally irritate them), but in this situation, it worked. I do not know why, but I got so much out of that sentence. This sentence is very normal, very simple, but yet to me it conveyed so much. At this moment(it is not a particularly suspenseful moment); I got this amazing visual of a father, a figure in this story of such stature and prestige, who was not hunched, embarrassed and ashamed of himself. And worse, his daughted was behind him to witness this pathetic moment. For some reason, I really appreciated this line and it makes me hopeful that sometimes I can throw some cliches into my writing in hopes that they will not seem cheesy, but rather will spark the readers' interest. It is funny how sometimes the worst techniques work the best in writing, thus complicating the task of writing even more.